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Trump turns against right-wing media and his own supporters over Epstein



President Trump is a 79-year-old lame-duck president, approaching a difficult midterm in which he is likely to lose his Republican House majority.

To add to that is the hardball political reality behind his failing effort to hush the scandal surrounding the decased sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein: The right-wing talking heads with the biggest audiences are starting to turn on him.

Perhaps they are having pangs of conscience. Perhaps they are starting to think about their paychecks, their influence and their future livelihoods once Trump exits the stage.

Whatever their motives, those top voices in the Trump media echo chamber deserve credit for keeping their spotlight on the Epstein case. And it is a good-faith effort, because the central truth is that countless young women were abused.

It is deeply troubling that the justice system failed those young women. The plea deal given to Epstein in 2008, which allowed him to plead guilty to prostitution and not more serious charges of sex-trafficking, can only be politely described as “suspicious.” Even Epstein’s death by suicide prompted reasonable doubt and questions about possible foul play.

Huge payments to Epstein by several of the nation’s richest men remain unexplained to this day. And both Trump and former President Bill Clinton had close personal ties to Epstein.

Since World War II, the U.S. media has had to fight the government to learn the truth about the Kennedy assassination, President Nixon’s role in the Watergate scandal and bogus claims that weapons of mass destruction were secretly held in Iraq.

Americans searching for hidden truths kept digging while most big newspapers and broadcast networks played the whole thing down as a kooky preoccupation for weirdos. Without strong investigative reporting, a hothouse culture of conspiracy theories grew on supermarket scandal sheets and extremist radio shows. With the rise of the internet, the conspiracy culture also took root on websites and podcasts.

Beyond new technology, the rise of conservative media is tied to its “free-for-all” embrace of conspiracy theories that generated click-bait and created cults of true believers. Today, the biggest papers and networks are in the background. They follow stories from conservative media as the authentic voice of the right-wing base that allows Trump to dominate the Republican Party.

Even if those stories are false, they are now news. They gained in strength when Trump’s supporters believed the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen and some attacked police officers as they stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The Epstein case is an earthquake for Trump and his base because the man now keeping secrets is the one who was previously advertised by conservative media as their dragon-slayer. He was elevated as a counterforce to the big newspapers and the elite, highly educated people who dismissed the common man’s search for truth.

Now Trump is busy attacking his own followers as foolish for buying “into this ‘bulls—’, hook, line and sinker” and called them “weaklings.” He is also trying to distract his fans by releasing new files on Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination and sending out minions to make baseless, long-dismissed charges of treason against former President Barack Obama.

Trump has also filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch for reporting that Trump once sent a “bawdy birthday card” to Epstein. (Full disclosure: Murdoch’s News Corp also owns the New York Post and Fox News Media, where I have served as a political analyst for nearly three decades.)

Trump’s strategy of distraction is nothing new. Fifty-five years ago, Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew tried to deflect attention from his own corruption scandal by attacking the media, calling them “the nattering nabobs of negativism.”

It didn’t work. Agnew ultimately resigned the vice presidency in disgrace rather than face prosecution for his crimes.

Thirty-three years ago, Republican President George H.W. Bush attempted to revive his reelection campaign in the face of indictments tied to the Iran-Contra scandal. He handed out bumper stickers at rallies with the slogan, “Annoy the Media, Re-Elect Bush.”

The conservative-slanted media was still in its infancy when Agnew and Bush made their feeble attempts at distraction. Now, Trump is aiming his fire and fury at a full-grown conservative media ecosystem. These are the very loud voices that elevated him, elected him and re-elected him.

One of the MAGA media universe’s core narratives is that Epstein ran an underage sex trafficking ring for the richest and most powerful people in the country — and that the government was covering it up. Two of the loudest voices promoting this theory were Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, now serving as director and deputy director of the FBI, respectively.

“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) famously said during hearings on the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. She is looking like a prophet.

In a striking exchange last week, MAGA-friendly podcast host Tim Dillon revealed that Vice President JD Vance invited him to a private dinner to spin him on the Epstein story. When the vice president is deployed to sway a podcaster, it only reinforces the perception that the Trump administration is involved in a cover-up.

Right-wing voices are right to keep the Epstein story alive. Even if it is only to keep the clicks coming, it must also be said that they are heeding Cheney’s warning about “dishonor.”

Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”

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